Saturday Waffling (January 18th, 2014)

I'm out of town for the weekend for my annual bit of intellectual masochism at MIT Mystery Hunt, and so am writing this several days in advance. For those who are unaware of this bizarre practice, it's something in the range of 48-72 hours of tricky puzzles solved in pursuit of finding "the coin" and winning the spectacularly awful booby prize of your team having to write the next year's Hunt.

The puzzles generally do not bother with things like "instructions" or "any meaningful sign of what you're supposed to do," and instead you have to simply figure it out by discerning a pattern of some sort in whatever the puzzle is.

Here's an example from two years ago that ought be in the wheelhouse of some of you. The answer to a given puzzle is always a word or phrase. I'd offer a prize to anyone getting it right, but given that the solution is linked in the upper right-hand corner, I can only offer my congratulations for your extreme skill at tasks with functionally no utility whatsoever.

An article in the Guardian from a year ago that I've been meaning to link to. (Sadly, by all accounts the BBCs Father Brown series is little more than a daytime tv Midsummer Murders.)http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/18/father-brown-the-empathetic-detectiveObviously wrong to say only McCoy's performance fits the description (or that McCoy was the nemesis of the series). Troughton's performance does. Actually, I'd say only Pertwee, the Bakers, and Tennant have no leanings in that direction. I'd say it's the sort of critical remark observation that gets right to the heart of the matter, despite one wanting to disagree with it completely.

For anyone who still hasn't picked up a beautiful mug from the Eruditorum Merchandise link to Zazzle (I like to call it the TARDIS Erudimporium) here's a coupon code for 50% off mugs, good until noon Pacific time today (Sunday): SUNDAYDEAL15

Now I'll get back to my breakfast, and rocking it with my wonderful Jellybaby mug.

Alas, I am sitting on the other side of the Atlantic - otherwise I would indeed have dropped by. I only get to Hunt remotely, and although I miss all the onsite shenanigans, it's still good fun and one of the highlights of my year. One day I am going to come over for it, but probably not soon.